


Glad in Him

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), The Tournament (2009)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 08:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Father Joseph MacAvoy has been many things, but once upon a time, he was a son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glad in Him

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Proverbs: He who has a wise son will be glad in him.

There are some days that you imagine happening. You think of all the ways they could go, and then when they do happen, they’re everything and nothing like you imagine.

Once upon a time, there was a world that felt safe and sane.

Father Joseph MacAvoy could only just remember it.

It was like grasping at straws. In a world that wasn’t his own, he needed something. That was why he had turned to religion, to something powerful and good that was strong enough to hold him up when he felt like falling. Falling was something that he feared.

He knew why, and he knew why he tried so desperately not to think of it.

He was always a strange boy, with no family, no background, a mystery case for the social workers. All the children at his school said so and never let him forget it. No one at his Maryhill school could understand it. His parents - fostered - said so too. He lived off with the fairies, they laugh, not knowing how cruel that was.

The Bible, the good book, was where he took his refuge. Most children turned to fairytales and myths and magic, but he didn’t want any of that. The Bible felt safe. The Bible gave him words and structure, and that was what he needed.

They called him Bible-thumper, and a hundred other names that should have hurt, but they didn’t. Nothing hurt until he took up the cloth and someone called him Father. 

Fathers were meant to be strong. Fathers were meant to protect their children. Fathers were not meant to falter and fail and let go. 

He was a Father now, not in blood but in faith, and he had to be strong for so many people. He was their guide, their mentor, their healer, their teacher. At first, he could be all that they asked, but little by little, they asked more and more. People wept. People confessed their sins. People expected him to be strong for them all, and his rosary flew through his fingers like thread through a spinner’s hands, until the flesh was red and aching. They wanted him to be their Father, but how could he be, when he had failed the most important person in his life? He found himself faltering, afraid, and wondering of this was what it felt like to be a coward.

That was when he took refuge in the bottle.

It was only one glass at first. A glass to soothe him before he slept.

All too quickly, it became two, then three, then as many as were necessary to let him sleep without dreams of falling and screaming and broken promises and a new and terrifying world replacing a world that no longer existed. 

In this world without any monsters or wars, it seemed the strangest irony that it took a miniature war to remind him of who he was. 

Assassins and killing games, bombs and guns, risking his own faith to save a self-confessed murderer with as many woes laid at her door as he had. It reminded him what it was to be brave, and what sacrifices sometimes had to be made.

Lai Lai was still out there, somewhere. Sometimes, he would look up at Mass and she would be there, even if she never stayed afterwards to speak to him. Just knowing that he had saved her, as much as she had saved him, was enough. A void that had been opened in him the night he had fallen had gently been filled: he was able to save people, even if he had not saved his own father. 

He felt good. He could be Father to his congregation, and that was a new, powerful feeling.

It was close to four years after the invasion of Middlesbrough when another event, no less shocking, rocked his steady, faithful world.

The Confession was the most trying part of his work: to know the voices and know the faces that went with them and the sins and tribulations that his flock suffered. It hurt to know that he had to keep the secrets of the Confessional, where he could only provide words of penance and atonement, and so little comfort for those in distress.

He knew each member of his Church, all those who would seek his guidance.

The arrival of a stranger was unexpected.

She had a soft, lilting Australian accent, and sounded uncertain. “Father?”

Joseph glanced through the latticework. He could see a glimpse of dark hair, pale skin and blue eyes, but little else. “I’m here, my child,” he said quietly. “Do you want to make your confession?”

“I-I don’t know,” she replied, sounding lost. “I’m not… that is, I’ve never done this before. I don’t… really believe in your God or your faith or… or anything, really.” She gave a small, quivering laugh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wasted your time.”

He heard her rise and said quickly, “Just because you don’t believe doesn’t mean you can’t confess,” he said. “Sometimes, speaking to a stranger is what a person needs to do. Maybe I can help you.”

She was silent, then the wood of the bench creaked as she sat back down. “I just need to talk to someone,” she whispered. “Someone who won’t judge me or think I’m mad.”

“Nothing you say within the confessional will go beyond it,” he promised.

She released a shaking breath. “I’m scared.” He made a soft, encouraging sound. “It’s… a long story, but my husband, he’s trying to find his son.” She breathed in, out, shaking. “We’ve been searching all over, and he’s somewhere in this city, but I don’t know if I want him to find him now.”

Joseph stared blindly at the knots in the woodwork in front of him. “You feel he would come between you?”

“No!” The woman sounded horrified at the thought. “No, of course not!” There was a dull thump, as if she had knocked her head back against the booth. “He’s just… he’s so desperate to make things right, and it’s been so long. I don’t know if his son will ever forgive him.”

Joseph closed his eyes. “Sometimes, a father will ask terrible things of a child,” he said quietly. “You might not believe in the Almighty, but he asked his own son to die for him, and the son obeyed and forgave him. Even the worst sins can be forgiven in time.”

“Can they?” Her voice was so low he could barely hear her. “What if he hates him?”

“It was a bad parting?”

She laughed tremulously. “You could say that,” she said. “My husband had been… badly influenced. He cast his son out.” There was the tiniest of hesitations. “It was as if he had thrown him into another world.”

Joseph felt like his breath had caught in his chest and it hurt. “Another world?” he echoed, his voice hoarse.

“Metaphor,” the woman said hastily, as if she had said too much. “He regretted it the moment he did it. He’s been looking for a way to find him ever since.”

“And he found a way to that other world?” Joseph’s head felt light. It was impossible and insane and ridiculous. 

“He did,” the woman replied in a whisper. “He sacrificed everything to get there, and I don’t know how he’ll react if his son doesn’t want to see him. He’s so sorry, but I don’t know if sorry will ever be enough.”

Joseph was breathing hard, he was trembling. It could just be a coincidence, a random and breathtakingly shocking coincidence. If it was his biological father, if it was true that he had reached this world, if he had given up everything…

“Why does he want to find him?” he asked, trying to keep the tremor from his voice. “To make him go back?”

“To apologise,” the woman replied quietly. “Nothing more. Nothing less. He won’t stay if he’s not wanted, but all he wants is the chance to say he’s sorry.”

Joseph wrapped his hand around the rosary, squeezing it until his hand ached. “Do you have a picture of this son of his?” he asked quietly. No one in the last fifty years would be without a photograph. “Perhaps you could make posters? Try to find him that way?”

“We don’t,” she replied. “We were… traditional people.”

“From a world without cameras and electricity?” he suggested quietly. He heard her catch her breath, as if she suspected. He touched the latticework of the booth, saw her look up at his silhouette, and her small hand touched the frame on the opposite side. “We’re in a world with all those things now.”

“But without magic.”

It was said and it was like a knife blow.

Joseph didn’t want to be a coward. He didn’t want to be afraid anymore. He could pretend to have misunderstood. He could retreat to the rectory and open the sealed bottle of whisky he kept in the newspaper rack. He could let his father go on, never knowing.

“Come back here tomorrow,” he said abruptly. “Two o’clock.” He pushed out through the curtains and strode briskly towards the back door. He needed air. He needed to stop shaking. He got out onto the step and was sick into the bush beside the door. 

He didn’t sleep that night, and he approached the rack and the bottle more times than he cared to admit, staring at the seal. It would be so easy to break it open, drink it, drown out the screams of the child he had been. 

You promised.

Don’t break our deal.

You coward.

For so many years, all he could think of was the father who had abandoned him to a strange and terrible world, a father who had let him go and would never see him again, a father who chose magic and power over him.

A father who had broken through from his own world, abandoning everything to find him.

A father who had a wife.

Joseph picked up the bottle and stared at it. He kept it as a reminder of what it was to be strong. Every time he saw the seal, still intact, he was reminded that he had gone another day without depending on it. 

It was an addiction. Like his father and magic. It was strange how their lives had paralleled one another: he had let down so many people because of his alcoholism, and his father had done the same with magic. Now, his father had no magic and he was sober.

He carried the bottle through to the kitchen, broke the seal, and poured the whole lot down the sink. There was strength, and there was absolute terror making him want nothing more than to hide at the bottom of the bottle. 

He had to be sober. He had to see if it was true. He had to look the woman’s husband in the eye and know.

He sat at the kitchen table, thumbing his rosary, and closed his eyes to pray.

By the time two o’clock rolled around, the next day, he knew he looked desperate: haggard, unshaven and pale. Given the circumstances, he felt that he could be excused. After all, it wasn’t even day that your estranged father crossed the boundaries of space and time to find you.

He went into the Church at quarter to the hour and knelt before the crucifix, crossing himself and whispering an Our Father. It put a little strength back into him, the eternal Father giving him the courage to rise when he heard the door of the church opening behind him. It took a little more to turn, and when he did, his hands were trembling.

Two people were standing in the doorway, one male, one female.

Joseph took a breath and stepped forward into a shaft of light from one of the windows.

The man made a small, strangled sound, and then said the name that had been unknown to everyone but its owner: “Baelfire?”

No running. No denying. No turning away.

“Yes,” Joseph said quietly.

Even if he could have denied his name, he could never had denied his face. The older he became, the more familiar his features were. He wasn’t quite as angular and thin as his father had been, softer around the edges of his face, but there was no denying his parentage.

The familiar step-step-tap pattern of his father’s walking cane made his breath catch.

Without magic, he was just an ordinary man. No curse, no japing, no monster.

Rumpelstiltskin - older, grey at the temples, but otherwise no different than he had been before the Dark One had taken him - approached him, his dark eyes fixed on Joseph’s face. He looked like a drowning man at the sight of land, and reached out to him, only to draw his hand back, as if expecting rejection.

“Oh, Bae…”

Joseph felt light-headed, his hand tight around his rosary. “Father,” he whispered. He didn’t know if it was a prayer, or if he was speaking to the man before him. He didn’t know what he was meant to say, or meant to do, until his father folded down onto his knees with a sob.

In that moment, he knew. There was no question. It was who he was.

Father Joseph MacAvoy, who had once been Baelfire, laid his hand upon his father’s head and said quietly, “I forgive you.”


End file.
